Ms.
Royals is an award-winning independent filmmaker whose work has
received support from the National Black Programming Consortium,
the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the American Film Institute,
among others.

Ms.
Royals directed and co-edited the performance-based feature film
documentary Conjure
Women (1995, 85:00), which premiered at the 1995
Mill Valley Film Festival and was broadcast nationally on PBS
in February 1997, and most recently completed the performance
documentary, BrotherMen
(2001, 56:00).

She
was an Artist-in-Residence at the Institute on the Arts and Civic
Dialogue at Harvard University (July 1999) and received an additional
residency award, "Artist as Catalyst 2000," from the
Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, as well as grants from the Rockefeller
Foundation Multi-Arts Production Fund and the National Endowment
for the Arts Multidisciplinary Arts Program to collaborate on
an adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's "Mother Courage,"
which she also directed.

She
is the recipient of a Writers Fellowship from the Writers Guild
of America, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Video
and a writing development grant from The Funding Exchange Women's
Project Scriptwriting Development Fund for her first dramatic
feature.

Ms.
Royals premiered her videowall installation on the images of African
American women, "Inventing Herself," at the 1993 Mill
Valley Film Festival and a re-mounting of "Inventing Herself"
at the Majestic Theater of the Brooklyn Academy of Music as part
of an international
arts festival there in the Spring, 1995.

She
is the Director/Producer of "Mama's Pushcart: Ellen Stewart and
25 Years of La MaMa E.T.C.," which has won numerous awards and
been presented at film and video festivals around the world. Ms.
Royals is a Director in the Directors Guild of America (member
since 1982) and is qualified in film and videotape.

She
earned her Masters of Fine Arts degree from New York University's
Graduate Institute of Film and Television and her Bachelor of
Arts degree in Journalism also from New York University.

Ms.
Royals was a recipient of a Kellogg Foundation National Leadership
Fellowship (1994-97), a Research Fellow at the Studio for Creative
Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University and Professor of Media Arts
Production at Ramapo College in New Jersey since 1990.

Ms.
Royals has also served on numerous arts panels and juries, including
the Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria. She is currently the Director
of the Film Program at Sarah Lawrence College.

"BrotherMen
is my love letter to Black men. It is for the Black men, both
known and unknown to me, who brought me and continue to bring
me safely across.

"If
I were to believe 'the hype,' we as Black men and women are at
war, or at best a cold peace, with each other, but to paraphrase
the words of mother Maya Angelou, we survived the middle passage
together, we stood on the auction block together, and we took
the lash together, so how can we not stand with each other now?

"So
now it is time for me in my own way and in my own discipline to
say to my brothermen, thank you.

"Thank
you, Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, for helping me to keep the faith
and to know that, even as I was sitting in a New England prep
school, my experience --though not reflected around me -- was
always there through your music.

"Thank
you, Pops Staples and sister/daughters Mavis, Yvonne and Cleo
Staples, for teaching me the values of always respecting my family
tree and always remembering to call on the ancestors, because
they would be there when no one else was.

"Thank
you, David Roussève, for helping me to understand the cost
and price Black men paid and continue to pay because they were
not allowed to protect their own and yet still stayed open to
love, hope, gentleness and grace.

"And
thank you, Chester Higgins, Jr., for reflecting back to myself
--starting many, many years ago in your first work that I discovered,
'Black Woman' -- that in your eyes, we as Black women are beautiful.

"Finally,
I'd like to dedicate BrotherMen to a brotherman who entered and
exited my life in two minutes and touched it forever. I was walking
home from grocery shopping in Brooklyn when a man yelled from
a truck, 'Hey, sister, can I help you?' I smiled and said, 'No,
brother, I'm fine.' He said, 'I know you're fine; that's why I
asked can I help you?' For you, wherever you are, and to all our
brothermen, thank you."

She
is the Executive Producer of "Mama's Pushcart: Ellen Stewart
and 25 Years of La MaMa E.T.C" (1988, 52:00), which won numerous
awards, including at the San Francisco International Film and
Video Festival, and was broadcast on PBS.

Ms.
Diamond has produced the videowall installations by Demetria Royals,
"Inventing Herself" (Mill Valley Film Festival, CA.,
1993, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, NYC, 1995), as well as
produced and collaborated with Ms. Royals on the adaptation of
"Mother Courage" in residency workshops, starting at
the Institute on the Arts & Civic Dialogue at Harvard University
(1999). She is a recipient of a 2002 Journalism Fellowship in
Child and Family Policy from the University of Maryland.

Ms.
Diamond earned her Master of Fine Arts degree in Dramatic Writing
from New York University.

"It
has been my privilege and honor to produce BrotherMen with Demetria
Royals. The realization of Demetria's vision as a filmmaker was
both supported and inspired first and foremost by the creative
talents and extraordinary generosity of Kenneth Gamble and Leon
Huff, Chester Higgins, Jr., David Roussève, Pops Staples
and Mavis, Yvonne and Cleotha Staples, and as well as by their
families, their colleagues and their extended communities. I am
deeply grateful to all of them for their participation in making
this project a reality.

"As
independent producers, we benefited from a 'brain trust' created
by working with our production funders. With NBPC and WQED Pittsburgh,
we were able to receive funding from the Independent Television
Service (ITVS) through the LInCS (Local Independents Collaborating
with Stations) initiative. The collective insight, expertise and
guidance gained by working with WQED, ITVS and NBPC was invaluable
in shaping the project and bringing it to the national PBS audience.
For their ongoing support, and the additional support of the National
Endowment of the Arts (NEA), my deepest appreciation and thanks."